America Lost
On June 21, 1788, the United States Constitution became the official governing document of this nation. The Preamble of that document reads: “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Two hundred and thirty-two years later those ideals have not been realized.
Why?
Because the seeds of racial hatred are inexorably planted in the soul of this nation.
This was evidenced recently when I posted a piece about what former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin could expect in prison for the callous and intentional killing of George Floyd on May 25.
Two individuals, both female, posted comments in response to the piece.
One is a Nazi-worshipping lunatic who was particularly incensed that George Floyd’s death is being recognized across the nation as a travesty; and the other is a non-degree, layperson who called me a “sick man” for writing the piece.
Both comments have fueled a firestorm of different reactions. I just let those fires simmer and burn themselves out.
But that some lunatic in the backwoods of Arkansas would use a Facebook post to express her empathy for Nazism and publicly discharge the sewage of her hatred for the Jewish faith is undeniable evidence that America has never found a way to live up to the ideals its Founders sought to form in a “more perfect Union.”
Fires of racial discontent smolder in dozens of American cities this day as people express their outrage over George Floyd’s death. Already, white people are trying to put a black face to the looting and destruction by invoking slogans (“when the looting starts, the shooting starts”) from notorious racists from the 1960s.
But just weeks before Derek Chauvin suffocated the life out of George Floyd white protestors stood on the capitol steps in Michigan with AR-15s slung over their shoulders, waving Nazi and Confederate flags, praising far right-wing violent militias, threatening lawmakers, and promising violence while some white public officials called them “fine people” and encouraged their lawless behavior with “liberate Michigan” chants..
That’s what racism does. It allows the voice of the worst Americans to be heard over the best Americans.
What do you think would have been the response if followers of the Nation of Islam stood quietly and peacefully on the capitol steps in Michigan with AR-15s, lawfully licensed and purchased, slung over their shoulders and holding the Nation of Islam flag?
Most white folks would have called them “thugs” or “radical terrorists”—the same people who called those waving the symbol of treason (the Confederate flag) “fine people.”
The seeds of racism inevitably produce an infected harvest of violence, regardless of the color of the racism.
The final tragedy is this: America today is as lost as it was in 1788 when some of the very Framers of the Constitution bought and sold human beings in the slave market.
The proverbial bite Eve reportedly took out of the apple is not mankind’s “original sin.” The original sin is the hatred one man has for another based on their color, culture, and origin—hatred that spans the entire history of mankind.